Buber's interpersonal theory as a hermeneutic

Martin Buber is remembered as a philosopher, existentialist, Zionist, and Jewish theologian. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that his theory of interpersonal relations forms a useful tool for categorizing some of the theoretical perspectives and therapeutic techniques within psychiatry. It is neither the intention nor purpose of the authors to judge the relative merits of competing modalities of treatment but to clarify their therapeutic mechanisms in such a way as to identify their purposes more precisely. Additionally, the authors wish to categorize the various schools of psychotherapy and their subdivisions according to the realm in which they are operative. Finally, they hope to demonstrate that Buber's system can be modified or elaborated upon by this connection with some of these approaches to personality theory.T.L. Brink, Ph.D., did his graduate work at the University of Chicago. He taught psychotherapy at Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores del Occidente in Guadalajara, Mexico. Currently he has a private practice in geriatric counseling in the San Francisco Bay area. He serves as a consultant for Midpeninsula Health Services and San Mateo County Mental Health and is on the faculty at College of Notre Dame and Palo Alto School of Professional Psychology.Connie Janakes leads a dream therapy group for the aged at Little House in Menlo Park, and counsels alcoholics at WRA in San Mateo, California.     

Experienced closeness and distance among family members

This study looks at experienced emotional closeness among family members using a projective measure, the Family Paper Sculpture. Results support the hypothesis that, in a non-clinical population, experiences of extreme closeness and extreme distance may be different manifestations of the same underlying process. Some support is found for the hypothesis that families in which relationships are experienced as very close or very distant at one point in time may experience those same relationships as extreme in the opposite direction at another point in time. Global coding of taped family interactions supports the hypothesis that extremes of experienced closeness are associated with more conflict, less ability to resolve differences, and less warmth and support among family members. It is suggested that the experience of being very close, varying through time with the experience of being very distant, may be associated with disappointed attempts to achieve closeness with autonomy.worked on this research while a graduate student in psychology at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.David C. Bell, PhD, completed work on this report while at Texas A & M University. He is presently working on a book about connection and dependency.The studies reported here were supported by grants from the National Institute for Mental Health and the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health. The authors would like to thank David Gutterman, Sheila Jones, Judy Nunn, and Theresa Rourke for coding the global scales.     

Visual search performance on an lcd monitor: effects of color combination of figure and icon background, shape of icon, and line width of icon border

This study investigated the effects of color combinations for the figure/icon background, icon shape, and line width of the icon border on visual search performance on a liquid crystal display screen. In a circular stimulus array, subjects had to search for a target item which had a diameter of 20 cm and included one target and 19 distractors. Analysis showed that the icon shape significantly affected search performance. The correct response time was significantly shorter for circular icons than for triangular icons, for icon borders with a line width of 3 pixels than for 1 or 2 pixels, and for 2 pixels than for 1 pixel. The color combination also significantly affected the visual search performance: white/yellow, white/blue, black-red, and black/ yellow color combinations for the figure/icon background had shorter correct response times compared to yellow/blue, red/green, yellow/green, and blue/red. However, no effects were found for the line width of the icon border or the icon shape on the error rate. Results have implications for graphics-based design of interfaces, such as for mobile phones, Web sites, and PDAs, as well as complex industrial processes.     

Responding to a Challenging Perceptual-Motor Task as a Function of Level of Experiential Avoidance

The Psychological Record - Participants displaying high versus low levels of experiential avoidance as assessed by the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (Hayes, Strosahl, et al., 2004) were...     

What do we learn from the Implicit Association Test about intergroup attitudes in Hong Kong? The case of social identification inclusiveness and need for closure

The current study tests an implication of the Associative-Propositional Evaluation model of implicit and explicit attitude measures in Hong Kong's intergroup context. We argued that the Implicit Association Test taps associative intergroup evaluations that are not necessarily consistent with the propositional implications of one's social identification inclusiveness and need for closure. In contrast, explicit intergroup attitude measures tap propositional evaluations resulting from validating the inferences drawn from pertinent propositional information in the evaluation context. Thus, explicit intergroup attitude should be consistent with the propositional implications of social identification inclusiveness and need for closure. We tested and found support for these hypotheses in a study of Hong Kong adolescents' ( N  = 65) perception of Hong Kong people and Mainland Chinese.     

Heuristic cognitive diagnosis when the Q‐matrix is unknown

Cognitive diagnosis models of educational test performance rely on a binary Q‐matrix that specifies the associations between individual test items and the cognitive attributes (skills) required to answer those items correctly. Current methods for fitting cognitive diagnosis models to educational test data and assigning examinees to proficiency classes are based on parametric estimation methods such as expectation maximization (EM) and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) that frequently encounter difficulties in practical applications. In response to these difficulties, non‐parametric classification techniques (cluster analysis) have been proposed as heuristic alternatives to parametric procedures. These non‐parametric classification techniques first aggregate each examinee's test item scores into a profile of attribute sum scores, which then serve as the basis for clustering examinees into proficiency classes. Like the parametric procedures, the non‐parametric classification techniques require that the Q‐matrix underlying a given test be known. Unfortunately, in practice, the Q‐matrix for most tests is not known and must be estimated to specify the associations between items and attributes, risking a misspecified Q‐matrix that may then result in the incorrect classification of examinees. This paper demonstrates that clustering examinees into proficiency classes based on their item scores rather than on their attribute sum‐score profiles does not require knowledge of the Q‐matrix, and results in a more accurate classification of examinees.     

An examination of predictor variables for child compliance and noncompliance

The purpose of this study was to examine the antecedents of child compliance and noncompliance. Both maternal and child behaviors served as predictors. Fifty-six clinic-referred children and their mothers served as subjects. Data were collected in the home setting by independent observers. Four multiple regression analyses were performed. The results indicated that the behavior immediately preceding child compliance or noncompliance typically was the best predictor. Furthermore, the antecedents for child compliance and noncompliance differed. For maternal antecedents, the type of command that served as the best predictor for child compliance and noncompliance differed; however, the final predictor equation was similar for the two types of child behaviors. For child antecedents, compliance was best predicted by compliance and noncompliance was best predicted by noncompliance. The results are discussed in terms of Patterson's coercion hypothesis.     

When Moral Personality and Moral Ideology Meet Ethical Leadership: A Three-Way Interaction Model

We propose a three-way interaction model based on substitutes for leadership theory to explore the relationship among ethical leadership, moral personality, and moral ideology (i.e., idealism and relativism) on two types of employee voluntary behaviors (i.e., organizational citizenship behavior and workplace deviant behavior). Results from a sample of 218 supervisor–subordinate dyads indicate that moral personality attenuates the relationship between ethical leadership and employee voluntary behaviors. Idealism serves as the boundary condition for the moderating effect of moral personality. However, relativism only serves as the boundary condition for the moderating effect of moral personality when predicting workplace deviant behavior.